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The war of words between the Trump administration and Anthony Fauci, one of the leading experts on pandemics in the U.S. for the last four decades, continues apace. Appearing on “Fox News Sunday” with Chris Wallace, President Trump said there was no campaign to discredit Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for three decades.
Wallace asked Trump about a Facebook FB, +0.45% post by Daniel Scavino, White House deputy chief of staff for communications, depicting Fauci as a faucet with the description: “Sorry, Dr. Faucet! At least you know if I’m going to disagree with a colleague, such as yourself, it’s done publicly — and not cowardly, behind journalists with leaks.” Trump did not quite dismiss those criticisms.
“ ‘Well, I don’t know that he’s a leaker. He’s a little bit of an alarmist. That’s OK. A little bit of an alarmist.’ ”
The president suggested that the doctor mishandled the crisis: “Well, I don’t know that he’s a leaker. He’s a little bit of an alarmist. That’s OK. A little bit of an alarmist.” He added, “Dr. Fauci at the beginning said, ‘This will pass. Don’t worry about it. This will pass.’ He was wrong.” Trump also said the doctor said, “’Don’t ban China. Don’t ban China.’ I did. He then admitted that I was right.”
On April 13, when reporters questioned Fauci about possible tension between him and the administration, Fauci said he made recommendations to Trump to restrict travel. “And the answer was yes,” Fauci said. “And then another time was, ‘We should do it with Europe,’ and the answer was yes. And the next time, ‘We should do it with the U.K.,’ and the answer was yes.”
Speaking to Wallace on Sunday, Trump also said, “I don’t agree with the statement that if everybody wear a mask everything disappears.” The president has rarely worn a mask in public and has not said Americans should wear masks. In a break with his tradition of eschewing any face covering, he wore one this past weekend while visiting Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Related:Fauci takes aim at Trump, state lawmakers and young Americans: ‘You’re propagating the pandemic’
Fauci, for his part, doesn’t see it that way. He has taken a more defiant tone, telling InStyle magazine, “With all due modesty, I think I’m pretty effective. I certainly am energetic. And I think everybody thinks I’m doing more than an outstanding job.” He said he evolved with the situation: “I don’t regret anything I said then because in the context of the time in which I said it, it was correct.”
He said, “We were told in our task-force meetings that we have a serious problem with the lack of PPEs and masks for the health providers who are putting themselves in harm’s way every day to take care of sick people,” adding, “When it became clear that the infection could be spread by asymptomatic carriers …we had to strongly recommend masks.”
“ Fauci has said that the U.S. government should promote social distancing and could do better with contact tracing. ”
The doctor also said SARS-CoV-2, the official name for the novel coronavirus that causes the disease known as COVID-19, will continue to spread unless everyone steps up their game. Fauci said many states have reopened too quickly, and people are not abiding by rules of social distancing and, people who don’t advocate social distancing, he said, “You’re propagating the pandemic.”
As of Sunday afternoon, COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2, had infected at least 14.3 million people globally and 3.7 million in the U.S. It had killed over 602,886 people worldwide and at least 140,128 in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Fauci has repeatedly said that the U.S. government should promote social distancing and could do better with contact tracing, the process of tracing people who have been in contact with someone who has the virus, and instructing them to stay home for 14 days. “I don’t think we’re doing very well, for a number of reasons, and not all of which is the fault of the system.”
Related:Defiant Fauci tells InStyle magazine: ‘With all due modesty, I think I’m pretty effective’
The WHO currently estimates that 16% of people with COVID-19 are asymptomatic and can transmit the coronavirus, while other data show that 40% of coronavirus transmission is due to carriers not displaying symptoms of the illness. As a result, public health officials have advised people to keep a distance of 6 feet from one another.
A recent University of California, San Francisco, study found that there’s a high load of SARS-CoV-2 shedding in the upper respiratory tract, even among pre-symptomatic patients, “which distinguishes it from SARS-CoV-1, where replication occurs mainly in the lower respiratory tract.” Such a viral load makes symptom-based detection of infection less effective in the case of SARS CoV-2, it said.
The markets appear torn between optimism in vaccine research and the economic impact of new surges in the south and southwest. The Dow Jones Industrial Index DJIA, -0.23% closed lower Friday though stocks post modest weekly gains, as investors tracked round two of the potential fiscal stimulus. The S&P 500 SPX, +0.28% and Nasdaq Composite COMP, +0.28% ended up slightly.
How COVID-19 is transmitted
